


Dulce et Decorum

by EnaLu



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Avengers Academy - Freeform, Death of Underaged Character, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, I just want WinterWidow to be movie canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-07
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-06-06 23:05:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6773956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnaLu/pseuds/EnaLu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is sweet and honourable to die for the fatherland, Horace said.</p>
<p>They don't have a fatherland.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dulce et Decorum

**Author's Note:**

> Ah yes, this one here is... Idk what it is. A complete mess probably. But I JUST NEED THEM TO BE CANON OKAY.
> 
> Takes place in the MCU, with characters from Earth-616 coming by and the shared past of my two little broken babies.
> 
> Unbeta-d. If someone wants to be my bitch and read my very unregularly shitty writing, feel free to hmu.

The lie is: The Avengers don't know of a homeland. Their home is the world, and for it they fight.

The truth is: They all have a home. Except for the two of them.

* * *

 

It's always the same after missions. Tony goes back to Pepper. Clint goes back to Laura. Bruce goes back to Betty. Steve does his weird veteran bonding time with Sam. Always the same. It's the same for Natasha and James, too. She goes back to her flat in Little Ukraine and he buggers off to Brooklyn. They live their lives without SHIELD and without the Avengers then. For her, it's freelance jobs involving high personal risks and a way too small payment, for him it's revenge and learning about the modern world (but mostly revenge).  
Occasionally, their mission is a shared one. He's there for his revenge. She's there for her money. It doesn't matter who pulls the trigger, as long as she gets her paycheck and he sees a dead person lying on the ground. Sometimes, they fly back home together. James Barnes (his name is so common, so nothing-saying, he can roll with it) and Natalie Rushman (still working for Stark Industries) on their economy flight next to each other, small talk like friends, a glass of wine, a shot of bourbon.  
After a while, the Avengers assemble and they take out a meanie. James is Bucky then, even if he ever so slightly flinches because of the name, for most of them (but not her). Steve isn't letting go of his friend's past, even if he let go of his own skinny self. Captain America might be the most righteous person they all know, but he's a hypocrite when it comes James Buchanan Barnes. So they fight against the bad people in the world together with the Avengers. Him and her, they work in perfect coordination. Kick, punch, shoot, repeat. Until their enemy is dead, taken into custody or whatever, they don't care, not the two of them. In the end, everybody has got a home of their own, people who care for them. Even Steve is getting his thing going with the other Carter girl.  
Natasha and James, their home was the Red Room, and it burned down years ago, alongside with their past selves.

* * *

 

This is the lie: Natalia Alianovna Romanovna was born on the 22nd November, 1984, Stalingrad.

This is the truth: Natalia Alianovna Romanovna is 87 years old.

* * *

  

James remembers her past, their past, but he keeps shut. He knows the value of memories all too well, and he cares for Natalia way too much to cause her a trauma.  
They altered hers into ones without, he knows, the KGB, after the Soviet Union crashed gloriously. Probably so she won't turn over secrets from decades and decades of USSR history (HYDRA, assassinations, wars, all that other gimmick that went down into history books).  
She hasn't had any triggers just yet to remind her of the times before, only him, and he's careful enough not to cause any sudden return of memories. He doesn't call her Natalia. He doesn't give into the urge to kiss her forehead. He loves her too much for that (after all that time? Probably always). He doesn't tell anybody either. Their past is theirs, their love was theirs, and she will come to him when she remembers, but he won't force her. Steve forces him to remember, and it's hell, it's pain without an end (even the good memories (Natalia) are tainted with blood).  
So he keeps his mouth shut. He will. Until the day she remembers or dies, he will keep quiet. Natalia and James (Yakov), it's been a long time since their names echoed with fear through the KGB. The Black Widow and the Winter Soldier. A force of nature. A deadly tsunami. Invincible. If they had known what they were fighting for, who they were fighting for, they could've brought down the whole Eastern Block together.  
But in the end they were soldiers carrying out orders.  
What an irony.

* * *

 

 

This is the lie: Natasha Romanov only cares for herself, Clint Barton and Nick Fury, in that order.

This is the truth: Natasha Romanov would die, trade her imaginary first born and let herself be tortured by the Red Room again, if she could save James Buchanan Barnes from his past (his present, his future).

* * *

 

Once she remembers, she can feel the sudden rush of memories (much more sudden than his was). She sees the children she killed, the women she slaughtered, the men she butchered. She nearly drowns in them. But there is him, too, in all that terrible and blood splattered memories: How they dance, how they kiss, how they fuck. They've been (are, will be forever) part of something bigger. Natalia and James, James and Natalia. She can cope with the memories. She's done many bad things even after they wiped her (in a black and white world, she'd be the deepest shade of grey). What overwhelms her is the thought that once she had somebody who was more: More than the job, more than her friends are now (more than Clint), more than herself. Once, there had been James (Yasha), who'd been hers, who'd trained her, loved her, worshipped her. James rushes to her when she calls him in the dead of the night, after a particularly bad nightmare of them putting him back into cryo in 1984 (her fake birthdate), right in front of her. This what you get for ignoring orders, comrade, they had said. They sold him back to HYDRA, because the KGB knew they wouldn't exist many years longer (they are, after all, Russians. They prevail governments). His arms feel oddly familiar around her waist. The cool of the metal contrasting the heat of his body: one side hypothermic, the other hyperthermic. James was never an easy man. He's a walking paradox. Now Natasha remembers the last time she cried: That day in 1984, when they sold him to handlers worse than the KGB. They kiss for the first time after 32 years, and she swears, she hasn't stopped loving him all that time (something always had prevented her from going after the men in her life, in the end).

* * *

 

This is the lie: James Buchanan Barnes is a forgiving man. He even forgives himself.

This is the truth: There isn't enough attonement in the world to justify the deeds James Buchanan Barnes had done.

* * *

 

He doesn't feel anything for the Stars and Stripes anymore. He doesn't feel anything for the hammer and sickle (he feels something for Natalia). Still, there is a horrible amount of blood on his hands, and it doesn't wash off as easily as he would like it to be. The others don't understand: Steve doesn't have to fight the guilt, neither does Sam. In the eyes of the world, they do the just things (fighting off aliens, AIs, rogue HYDRA assets like him). Tony turned from producing weapons to saving the world, Clint has always been a SHIELD agent and everybody else is too damn good to understand. Except for Natalia, but she's dealing with her own shit (forgotten memories, forgotten murders). Of course, she still tries to comfort him and he still gives in, even if _he_ should be the one comforting _her_. The world has never been kind to the two of them. Somebody has always crap to put up with. So he fights harder than the others on the Avengers. He's got nothing to lose, really, except for Natalia (and he fights for her, always has). He fights each battle as if it is his last one. It worries her, of course, but she's the reason he's holding on (and she understands his need for forgiveness). Sometimes, when the fighting is over, they go back to her place, bloody and bruised, and drink Russian caravan tea, strong and tasty. It is all too familiar. Then she bandages his wounds, kisses his bruises, as if she's the magician that makes his body heal, not the twice-damned super soldier serum. They go to bed, her wrapped in his arms, the human one under her, the metal one around her waist. He kisses her neck, murmurs a soft _I love you_ in Russian. She's already asleep by then. They have been like that before and they are know, except that know, there is guilt on his shoulders (and hers, too). Their ledges are dripping red. So they fight for a new cause. If it's better none of them know, but in the end it doesn't matter. They are good soldiers, they follow orders. It isn't important where the orders come from, who gives them. Sometimes, when they are like this, when they are Tasha and Yasha (not Natasha and Yakov, not Natalia and James), he thinks the only forgiveness he needs to carry on his hers.

* * *

 

This is the lie: dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

This is the truth: mors et fugacem persequitur uirum nec parcit inbellis iuuentae poplitibus timidoue tergo.

* * *

 

It is sweet and honourable to die for the fatherland, Horace once said.

They don't have a fatherland.

They have each other and they have the Avengers and it is enough for them. Years pass and nobody dies in battle (a wonder), nobody dies for the greater cause, nobody of them, but many innocents. Because of fires, of crashing buildings, because of the games men and women with great power play. Steve isn't aware of it (Steve, who's desperately trying to find something so he can age with Sharon, without reversing the serum completely), Tony is aware of it, but his horizon has always been wider than the ones of the others. Most of them begin to age, their bodies to decay. They establish the Avengers Academy: Clint takes in a young girl under his wing and Wanda's kids become spitting images of herself and her dead twin brother. Him and her, they don't age. They remain Natalia and James (sometimes Natasha and Yakov, sometimes Tasha and Yasha). They are in charge of the kids' spy training. Hand-to-hand combat, infiltration, intel gathering. What they don't teach them: Killing, torturing, poisoning. It isn't the Red Room, no matter how often it resembles it. But here's the thing: The kids aren't prepared for war. The Russians prepared her, no matter how cruel their methods were. Who surivived, could survive everything. She survived. James did. Yelena Belova survived, until she put a bullet through the other Black Widow's brain when she tried to kill Clint on HYDRA's behalf. When the kids go out for their fights, they come back battered and bruised and bloody. Wanda goes half-mad with sorrow when her precious little babies return to the Academy with cuts and wounds. Some of them, they know it deep within, are going to die young. Younger than the original Avengers. Cassie Lang is the first one to go, shortly after her father dies. Dr Doom kills her, because she wasn't prepared for torture, for trauma. She had been just a kid. Everybody at the Academy griefs and cries (they do, too, just a bit). They don't know death really. Nobody understands (James does. Natalia does) Death is merciless. It doesn't spare anbody, not even the young ones. One day they will have to lower the rest of their friends. One day they will be all six feet under and the two of them will prevail until they die in battle (a soldier's death, a fitting death). Steve will go before them, too, they know. They're getting close enough to an anti-serum of some sort. James won't take it, neither will Natasha. It's who they are and they got each other.

They're the home they need.

Not America, not Russia. Only James and Natalia, Natalia and James. Sometimes Natasha and Yakov, sometimes Tasha and Yasha. It's not that they don't care about their students or friends (they do, so much, in fact, that it hurts), but they'll survive as long as they have each other. It doesn't matter who'll go first, the other will follow close enough.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, Horace once said.

They are each others home, and they would gladly take a bullet for the other.

**Author's Note:**

> The latin (and the title) come from Horace's Odes III, 2.; especially the fourth verse:
> 
> dulce et decorum est pro patria mori:  
> mors et fugacem persequitur uirum  
> nec parcit inbellis inuuentae  
> poplitibus timidoue tergo.
> 
> Translated this means:
> 
> It is sweet and honourable to die for the fatherland  
> Yet death chases after the soldier who runs,  
> and it won’t spare the cowardly back  
> or the limbs, of peace-loving young men.
> 
> (and yes, I translated it myself, and yes I used fatherland because patria stems from pater (which means father) #linguistproblems)


End file.
